Given England's total over-reliance on South African schooled cricketers like Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott they will get away with scoring enough runs when not playing quality attacks. KP at 32 won't be a guy to play around till he is 36/37 as he will be worrying about being away from his wife too long and who knows what will happen with the ego next. A KPless England looks very vulnerable as we saw recently. Alistair Cook showed in the series against South Africa after his first knock that his old deficiencies can be attacked when up against a moving ball. The struggles in the middle order haven't been totally sorted. The two 'great' spinners have both been nullified by South Africa in their home conditions on our last two tours there. Jimmy Anderson is quality on his day but didn't really do much against us on our last tour there and before that.

Wachacha

See what I did there.

This is an awful, defensive, effectively warmongering post. Scaly didn't say you didn't have a better team than England or even compare your side to England in any way; he was just responding to the thread title by pointing out that even though South Africa have the best side, they probably won't go on a massive undefeated run because they have a few weaknesses that could see them drop series to teams they're better than on paper.

You only brought England up because someone who supports England criticised your side, which by definition makes it a terrible post. I consider you a great member too, so this is totally out of character. If you disagree with his points about the side, say why. Post properly.

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This is an awful, defensive, effectively warmongering post. Scaly didn't say you didn't have a better team than England or even compare your side to England in any way; he was just responding to the thread title by pointing out that even though South Africa have the best side, they probably won't go on a massive undefeated run because they have a few weaknesses that could see them drop series to teams they're better than on paper.

You only brought England up because someone who supports England criticised your side, which by definition makes it a terrible post. I consider you a great member too, so this is totally out of character. If you disagree with his points about the side, say why. Post properly.

Protect him it's fine with me. I've done all the wrong here and I apologise.

Given South Africa's total lack of depth, Kallis retiring soon, and the fact that their batting is so reliant on 3-4 guys I would expect to see them randomly lose a series somewhere. In the past 2-4 years their random defeats have been spread out a bit so they've tended to get away with 1-1 or similar scorelines. Given they only really play short series it won't take much for them to lose a series somewhere.

Well yeah Tendy is probably better than Bradman, but Bradman was 70 years ago, if he grew up in the modern era he'd still easily be the best. Though he wasn't, can understand the argument for Tendy even though I don't agree.

Exactly, the depth can't be that great if they were picking in Australia a couple of specialist bats averaging mid 30's in Rudolph and Duminy. Not like they can argue that they are only just starting out and will improve.

3-4 top batsmen alone means you're still going to suffer some 'freak' performances every series or so. Like getting rolled by Sri Lanka. Australia in their peak had 7 at least decent batsmen with the odd top/great batsman - so instead of a bad match it was a below par innings once in a while so average teams would barely get a sniff.

South Africa's innings scores are much more volatile, their series are almost all 2/3 matches. So chances are they'll randomly lose a series sooner rather than later, particularly with injuries/retirements. No country can replace a great, but with South Africa the difference between their best players and the reserves is particularly big.

He won't play again, was only on that tour as he can bowl a bit of spin. Will not go to NZ. If we had taken Bopara and played him you would have a point but thankfully he is way down the list now. Just need to **** Morgan off now.